


my hands and feet are weaker than before

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lack of Communication, Pre-Series, all i do is write dumb fire nation angst?????????, that's it that's their pre-series relationship right there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 23:32:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8467216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: he had looked at this boy and thought, so so selfishly: here is your chance to make things right, here is your chance to help where you failed before. (iroh slips up; they don't talk about it.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> man all i do is write >2000 word nonsense and angst???? idk what this is???? (aka a friend and i were talking abt how zuko has def called iroh dad at least once and then i was like hm,,,,,what if,,,,it was the other way around,,,,) 
> 
> (pre series zuko & iroh angst for the win)

 

 

iroh came back from the war, and he had a dead father and a dead son and a missing sister-in-law and a brother on the throne that was supposed to be his, and he could not find it in himself to care very much about that last one.

(he had left most of his heart behind in ba sing se, with his son who would never open his eyes again.) 

he had looked at his brother, and realized that he did not know him anymore. he had look at his niece and his nephew, and realized that he barely knew them at all. he had looked at his niece and seen far too much of ozai, with her knife sharp smiles and plotting eyes. he had looked at his nephew and seen far too much of himself, all small and pale and grieving, silent enough to nearly fade into the tapestries—his mother was gone, iroh’s son was gone, and they were both of them startlingly alone. 

he had looked at this boy and thought, so so selfishly: here is your chance to make things right, here is your chance to help where you failed before. 

(now, he isn’t sure he’s made much of a difference at all—he knows; he knows he has looked away far too many times. he know he’s seen the bruises and burns that couldn’t all be explained away by training, he took zuko’s story about falling out of the tree in the garden as a liable excuse for his broken arm, he filled him with tea and stories about his conquests when he came to him with red-rimmed eyes and singed hair instead of asking the reason he was there to begin with. 

he knew he couldn’t do anything. selfishly, he thought it might be best not to give the boy false hope of him saving the day, being the hero like he was in his stories. zuko was too _good_ , too small and determined and kind for the world they both lived in, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. so, selfishly, he looked away. and it all came to a head in the end, in that meeting and then the arena, and, selfishly, he looked away then too. he could still see the silhouette of his bent body through his eyelids.

he had looked away and then looked at him, small and swaddled in so many bandages he thought they might swallow him up, and decided, far too late, that he wouldn’t look away again.)

he came back from the war without his son, and, so so selfishly, found solace in another one.

and it’s an accident, it’s entirely an accident, but zuko is tired and hunched over the table with his head propped in one hand, complaining, sounding so so much like lu ten in his early teen devil years, back when he would go on and on about his studies or girls or something else that couldn’t be dealt with in the middle of the night. and so it’s an _accident_ when iroh blows on his cup of tea and loses himself in the memory and says, “eat—complaints won’t do you any good right now, lu ten, save them for the morning.” 

he freezes. zuko freezes. the candles lighting the table flicker.

he opens his mouth to say something, anything. words catch in his throat at the look on the boy’s face—eyes wide and locked on the table, eyebrows furrowed in something painfully surprised and confused and _hurt_ —flashing so bright and young before he catches himself and then closes himself up, shoulders drawn up tight like they’re held together by thin thin wire. he doesn’t say anything. 

it would be better, iroh thinks, if he would get angry like he does so often. but instead, all he does is bite his lip and blink a few times and then say, too quietly, like the shell-shocked boy back in the palace, “i’m not hungry anymore.” 

he wants to grab his arm and say i’m sorry, say i didn’t mean to, say it’s not like that, you’re no replacement, you’re so much more than that.

he cannot move. 

zuko won’t look him in the eye when he stands, won’t look him in the eye when he walks, a little too quickly, too rigidly, out of the room and down the corridor. he hears the sound of the door to his own room slamming shut, and it makes him flinch. 

he wants to stand and follow and tell him that there is no one like lu ten, just like there is no one like him, that he loves lu ten and he loves _him_ too, and there is no way to compare them, no way he would compare them, no way he ever could. he wants to tell him i’m _sorry,_ because he is still so young and they hit the one year mark last week, he’s been stuck on this ship for a year now because his father has hurt him and banished him and he cannot accept that, and iroh is the one person he has left and now he thinks he is just a replacement to him.

he is so much more than that, he means so much more to him than that. he doesn’t know if zuko would believe him if he told him. he takes these things to heart. 

he cannot move. he cannot make himself move. the silence weighs him down. he breathes, deeply, puts the cup on the table, and slowly closes his eyes. 

he’ll talk to him in the morning, he thinks. when zuko has had time to cool down and rest and iroh has had time to swallow his guilt and his self-reproach and figure out what exactly he can say.

he doesn’t hear a sound from zuko’s room all night.

(he sleeps late. zuko gets up early. they never do find time to have that talk.)

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> w/ every comment a puppy is born


End file.
